Night of Erna
by Fragorl
Summary: In a castle of outstanding beauty, a woman approaches her home and her husband with a sense of unexplainable foreboding. In another castle, a man accustomed to victory finds himself unaccountably afraid.
1. Chapter 1

This is an origional creation playing with the characters and settings provided by the wonderous Celia Friedman, and I am in no way doing this for profit. None of what happens here has any reflection on the actual novels! Just a fan playing around (harmlessly)

Something seemed wrong. He was never sure where the feeling came from, the conviction that had him setting down the piece and turning reflexively towards the door. The room was silent but for the slight shifting of his opponent's chair, but he never noticed that. No, not so...he noticed...but dismissed it because of another feeling, equally uncertain that there should instead be silence. Not the life filled rustlings of a household but ...silence. The quality that came only from the perfect insulation, the like of stone walls, or .... or underground? He was not sure what created the image that came to him then, of such unwarranted clarity, but it was there, so vivid in his mind that it seemed true right down to the cold. A cave like space in which the air itself seemed somehow dead, and the very silence an affront when heard in the wake of the.... Here the insight died, abruptly as though it had been cut off by some conscious brush of will. Left with the fleeting concept that this stillness was deceptive, Gannon shook himself inwardly and turned back to the fire lit room and the game where his partner watched with a half raised eyebrow. Giving the board a cursory examination he lifted the figure of a horseman- it seemed somehow appropriate- and set it down. A poor move, he knew that, even without the skilfully covered surprise of the other player. He tried to bring some order to his head while the game resumed, but a last fragment of the strangeness lingered only slightly. The cool surprise that had nothing whatsoever to do with himself of an ability to hear the sound of running water. Foreboding stayed with him for the remainder of true night, a presence that he dreaded and could not seem to banish with his reason. For the first time in many nights, Gannon played and lost.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 – Remnants

He received the messenger in one of the higher galleries. The room was a familiar one, walls lined with now retired artefacts, the remnants of his victories. It was not a manoeuvre of particular subtlety, he mused, striding towards the servant garbed in the midnight blue and gold that were the Merentha colours. It had become something of a practise of his to meet with troublesome subjects in this place, so resonant with his triumphs. The fae responded to such gestures, Gannon knew, manipulating the emotions of those who stood before him, shifting their inclinations until absolutely unconsciously they began to favour him. As a technique it had worked with the flawless efficiency of the once existent earth science. But then...he felt once more the uncomfortable surge of emotions that rose up with every reminder of that particular Neocounty...the concept had come from a man whose pronouncements he had come very much to rely on...

It was a strange and almost unnatural thought that that man was now the one against whom he sought unhappily to turn them. He came up short, the messenger not a man he recognised. Fair enough, Gannon thought, uncomfortable. The Neocount had possessed too much of a knack for reading the feelings of strangers to have been unaware of those of a man with whom he had once worked as closely as they had. For some reason he hesitated even in his mind to fall back on the word 'friend'. There was too much of formality in the incidence of the blank stranger's face for that. It was all too easy to remember that there was once a time when he had ridden into Merentha unexpected, knowing the unsurprised footmen there by name. Too much second nature to fall back on memories of striding through the reverent silence of the Temple, the stresses of rulership lightening imperceptibly amongst the ripples of his people's faith.

Their work had been easier then, the dream more simple. Now he faced this man, this servant of a former friend and knew with a cold finality the change which had occurred. It had been no co-incidence, his choice of this meeting place; made the instant he learnt from where the man had come. It was an uncomfortable acknowledgement that it was a precaution he would never have though to take against the Neocount himself. Moreover, he acknowledged to himself only now the relief he had felt approaching the figure and beholding only a stranger. For how long had he fretted, since hearing of the messenger, that instead of the man's servant it would be the man himself? Of course that particular fear defied all logic; the Neocount may have been absent Court for all of two years but he was certainly remembered. There was no way that he would ever be admitted and mistaken as a servant of his own...unless he himself had willed it. And that Gannon thought, with a slightest repressed shiver at the memory of the other man's presence, was something against which his most efficient men would have been powerless to guard.

So he spoke, greeting the servant cordially, if with little show of welcome; all the while unaccountably relieved that the man he faced was of a medium height and heavy build, rather than tall, imposing and as of their last meeting, faultlessly polite and utterly cold.

'Your Highness,' the servant addressed him and for the first time Gannon was pulled firmly enough out of his thoughts to notice the man's discomfort. There was something at foot here, that went further than mere unease at the knowledge of his master's unofficial disgrace. 'Speak,' he commanded, striving to uphold the evenness of tone that must be met that a Monarch be perceived as always in control. But his mind wondered, unwillingly, to the unasked for insight of the night before, and inwardly he shivered. And as the man spoke, slowly as if to a child, or more accurately as one reeling from shock, of the discovery that had been made that same morning, the Neocount's wife, Gannon sees unbidden and vividly an image. A beautiful girl, a child really, not more than nineteen years old, her dark red hair cascading to her shoulders in a grim premonition of the blood that would later soak her breasts, and he feels the nausea rising up unquenchably within him. The fate of his former friend's children reaches him from more of a distance, as if the shock that he had been capable of had been used up in that first terrible revelation, the woman he had known, carrying more of a horror than the children he cannot picture. _Madness_, he thought, irrationally, the Neocount a beautiful phantom in his mind, watching him coldly from the cave he had already somehow witnessed.

'Your Highness?' the concerned question was needed to jolt him back from dark toned wonderings to the present. 'Leave me.' The words are difficult, and he chokes them out, aware as he does so that they come out more violent than he had intended. After a moment the messenger leaves, taking _those_ colours with him, unwelcome reminders of thoughts he does not want to be faced with. Leaving Gannon with the unpleasant thoughts of...

'Why?' he whispers his voice sharp with accusation in the empty gallery in which he stands alone. He had paced here once, the nervousness of an untried ruler manifested only before a most trusted adviser. He had stood before that window, looking out on the night, and the man framed before it, grey eyes ever so slightly narrowed as he searched for signs the mere King could not begin to fathom. No trace of fear their, no nervousness, simply an arrogance the like of which no other man could summon.

He remembers another conversation, quite different; the response to his reluctant words two years past, awkward conciliation even where he knew none could possibly be offered. 'I see,' Gerald Tarrant had whispered, and something of his tone had been such that Gannon had been, for the first time ever truly afraid of his advisor. He remembers in silence the moment that had hung so briefly within them, taunt with threat, born of a nature Gannon could not quite put his finger on. Then 'I will not detain you.' So they had parted, the Neocount bowing his head ever so slightly, the revivalist courtesy as natural to him as it was false to so many other courtiers. Even his semi-exile had not prevented half the Court from their pale attempts to mimic him. He wondered if they still would.

Gannon closed his eyes, trying to banish the images that come to him, built of a combination of guilt and blood. This had been absolutely unexpected and yet...he cannot deny the start of fear he had experienced even back then. Was it really so hard to imagine the seeds of that expanding in a man of such brilliant mind finding his expression so suddenly curbed? How close the distinguishment between mastery and madness? Feeling suddenly and inexplicably tired, Gannon turned back from the gallery and started towards the stairs. The consequences of this stretched far beyond those of a personal level, indeed far more than the madness of any other man. Already the seeds of corruption would have worked their way from the scene of such violence into the fae, speeded by the horror and shock of men like the messenger. And it was the duty of a king to above and beyond look at the wellbeing of the many no matter what the feelings of his own. With a cold efficiency the like of which another man would have been proud of, Gannon descended the steps absolutely certain of what he had to do.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3.

'Your Highness.' The Patriarch looked surprised which was all to the good; Gannon had been very specific that he should not be warned about this impending visit. Standing somewhat awkwardly from the nu-oak desk, the select Prince of the church inclined his head to the king of the Realm. It was a courtesy, of course, Gannon himself had fought for the independence from forms of state for the church that was his own creation. Still he did not wave the gesture away, and this in itself should have told the man something of his mood. From the slight discomfort on the Patriarch's face his feelings had been registered. He allowed the man to invite him to take a chair, before lowering himself to sit.

Gannon had not registered that he was tired before he sank down onto the uncomfortable chair so in keeping with the reserved figure whose study it furnished. The sparsity of the decor was in no way hypocritical, he reminded himself, in the interests of fairness. It had been the natural tendency towards self humility that had made Iriond Serevast seem the ideal candidate for a post of such authority back when the church was but an exercise of theory and not the growing expanding construct that it represented today. There was nothing in the holy writings to require such a standard, indeed to defer to it at all had been a constant irritation to their Prophet, but as he himself had said _'the memories of the old ways are slow to die, and if success can only be achieved by adopting some of the unnecessary, we would be fools not to...'_ Gannon stopped himself short. He was here for a purpose and there was no benefit at all to be had in drawing on the past.

'You wish to speak with me.' Serevast was watching him with eyes that while not powerful as such were not without their own authority. _Authority which I gave him_, Gannon reminded himself with a sudden flash of irritation.

'I imagine that you are quite aware of why' the King informed him coldly. It took just the slightest flicker of the other man's eyes to a report lying somewhere on the cluttered desk to confirm his suspicion; yes the man knew _exactly_ the reason behind his visit. Serevast nevertheless took a moment to respond.

'I believe the purpose of your visit is to discuss the heresy of a former priest-'

'-The Prophet of your faith' Gannon was aware of the fury that was entering his voice and forced it down. This was no time for anger, he knew that. He was here for a reason, and he would accomplish it.

-'Who was excommunicated from our Order just one month short of two years past.' The Patriarch spoke with the dogmatic certainty of one addressing a particularly stupid child. Had the seeds of that defiance always been there, lurking behind the humble facade, or had that too been a consequence of newfound power? It disturbed him that he could not tell. The man had always proved biddable enough throughout the Crusades', a figurehead who was respected but not loved, followed but not...revered... A reliable pawn who would be content to stand in the shadow of the two men whose personalities had been the Church's driving force... There had only ever been the one matter on which he had refused to be swayed, and Gannon had always allowed his Patriarch his head when it came to less integral aspects of Church policy. It had been unthinkable to contemplate causing a breach between the movement's principle powers over smaller disputes; not when the fae would magnetise any such inharmony a hundred fold, and while the people were watching them from all across the Continent with hope but also distrust. He would not cripple its power for the satisfaction of so small and insignificant a victory. At the time it had seemed a little sacrifice. Now....

Gannon met the other's eyes and held them. He was reminded of that other meeting, the only other time in their relationship where the man had dared to challenge him with any degree of openness. It had taken an abhorrence the size of a sorcerer in such a fundamental position of authority to bring his determination to that level but, when the confrontation came it was with a seriousness that the king had been unable to set aside. The arguments which had been made were convincing; the principles behind them sound. _How can our Church hope to restore to us the wonders of the Universe while at the same time stoking the forces of our own oppression? How to advocate a world where demons lacked in force all the while simultaneously breeding more of their kind to prey on future generations_....

The quality of personal offence behind those bright with belief eyes had manifested itself even then, but the arguments had been sickeningly sound. _By binding the church to such an essential hypocrisy, one that stretches so deeply to its very roots_, Serevast had asked him, _how can we hope to achieve so much as success, if not freedom? Why should the world be prepared to follow guidelines that we do not respect ourselves?_ And for this Gannon had had no answer. As much as it had pained him to admit it the argument the man had offered him was entirely true. He remembered sitting in this same room, and thinking desperately for any way around it other than the solution that he knew too well.

He had come up with only one; should the Prophet, a natural sorcerer, be prepared to turn his back on the Fae and Power, in a sacrifice so potent that the people would see it and be won, the symbolism of the gesture would set him further in their eyes than he had sat even at that time. It was the only way that he could see for sorcery and the church to be combined. And he had known it then, even as the possibility formed inside his head, the realisation coming to him with resignation, even as he pictured the man, dressed stylishly as ever, his eyes bright as he explained some formerly undiscovered aspect of his passion;_ he will never do it. _

Gannon had conceded then. He had bent his head to the will of this other, and the burden of the perseverance of his...their...creation. _You would have understood_, he thought silently to the figure of his mind. The friend he had persuaded turned his back on for all of the right reasons. _You were always the first to argue for actions born from necessity... _His eyes fell on the portraits that hung behind the Patriarch and his desk; three, the one at the bottom of the Patriarch himself; it was a lifelike rendition, of a lifeless looking man, gaunt and strained, but eyes afire with the force of his religious conviction. A certainty that could never have existed if the man had been a player in the establishment, Gannon could not help with a sinking cynicism. On the right was a face that was at the same time recognised and alien.

The king who looked down at him, with a frown of solemn benefaction wore his own familiar features, but there was also something about the set of them that was also somehow off... It was the certainty he realised, after a moment. The man who was immortalised in the portrait above them was a force of wisdom and confidence, the figure of a self assured ruler who was as incapable of second guessing as he was of acting in incorrect judgement. Looking at him, Gannon mused it was little wonder men were prepared to follow him. He wondered if there had ever been a time when the semblance had been real. When he was younger perhaps, and life had seemed so much easier; his faith was sweeping the nations, the winds carried him from victory to victory...It had been before the culture of cynicism had began to pose enough of a risk that it became clear that successes they may have had, but they were still far from victory, and even though it hardly seemed so year by year that gap was widening. Before politics had taken a hold of his life to the extent that right and wrong had vanished entirely; obliterated by the decisions that he must make, until all he was capable of seeing were the actions. The balancing of wrongs against wrongs until he was no longer able to remember what it felt like to have a clear purpose, the like of which shone so brightly from the man before him. And yes, Gannon thought, I envy him. Correct or not, this man had a conviction. Whereas he...

Drawn as much by inevitability as any particular desire, Gannon's eyes fell on the portrait to the left. And there he stood. Regal as he had seemed in life, a slender man, tall and imposing, with eyes that seemed to look out of the portrait, ever so slightly narrowed as though assessing the situation playing out before him, but giving nothing away. Tarrant had been young when the portrait had been taken, no more than twenty five, but the youthful cast to his features had done no more than add to the unnerving quality of age that shone through in his eyes. A form of...knowing... that had discontented men of more than three times his age. And yes there was that other sense, the one of otherness that had imbued the Prophet's every action; he had identified it only later, it was the distance of a man who understands humanity far more than he has any desire to, and removes himself accordingly. The curse of a gift that embewed such a unique understanding; it was little wonder that adepts went mad so often. _As you yourself did_, Gannon thought, and with it a definite sense of regret that went further even than that when he had realised the decision he must make; that to ensure the survival of the church it must be cut off from its creator. Yes, fallen, victim of the trap that had haunted him from birth, _and how much of that_, Gannon wondered, _was the result of my actions_.... He shook his head and forced himself back to the conversation.

'The news of this has been suppressed, naturally. At least so far as can be realistically expected, with the exception of those from whom it could not be hidden, the members of the Households, relatives... It is a suitable stop measure for the present, but given time it will leak out, and the damage then...'

'-will be immeasurable.' Serevast seemed almost satisfied with the conclusion. 'Which makes it necessary that more permanent pre-emptive action be taken. We can act now, and distance ourselves sufficiently from the heretic that not only will the damage be minimized it may even become a point in our favour. The demon who concealed himself within our midst, with his mask of courtesy covering the evil of his sorcery, uncovered at last when confronted by his failure to corrupt the church he so wished to rob of its inherent purity. ' Gannon was silent, and perhaps taking this for agreement Serevast went on. 'The decisions made by us vindicated, the evils of a sorcerer in the ranks displayed for all to see. With the capture of the fugitive our victory will be resounding, and should he have perished in the course of his madness...'

'And so you would have me renounce the man whose imagination birthed your faith.' Gannon schooled himself to calmness, there was only harm in letting his temper stretch beyond its reign. That could only damage his purpose. 'I would have you take action against a man condemned by the repugnance of his own actions.' The reply came quickly.

'Like it or not Gerald Tarrant was the principle reason for the creation of the office you now hold; I will not strip that from him.'

'You were not so certain in your resolutions while your Prophet lived.' Gannon closed his eyes. 'You will not allow the prominence of our Church to be damaged by the actions of a single man, and one with whom you disagreed anyway. And I will not allow that dream to be threatened, not when so much has been sacrificed that it should stay afloat. But I will not strip the man responsible for its creation from his due recognition... He has earned that at least...whatever else he has done.... So there are our standpoints...' Gannon felt his eyes rise once more to the silent disapproving portrait, mouthed a silent apology. He finished softly, but with a certain resolution, 'There may yet be a way of combining them...'


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4 – discovery.**

Eric dreamed. He was standing in the courtyard, his unhorse just a few steps away, its reigns dangling loosely from where its master had let them fall. The Castle loomed above them, a monument to beauty, to revivalism. His father's creation, although never destined to be remembered, shadowed effectively as it was by the sheer scope of the Neocount's other achievements. At eleven years he was old enough to understand that there were things more impressive than castles, but still to consider the imposing structure a fairly concrete proof of conquest. He could see the windows from where he stood, subtly stained so that they caught and turned the flashing light of dawn. A display of beauty that even familiarity could not entirely dull. The oldest son of the Neocount of Merentha stood in the sunrise, and it never occurred to him to make the obvious comparison between the tint of dawn and the shades of spilt blood.

The discomfort of his unhorse was the first indication that there was something wrong. There should have been people out to greet him, that was their practise when the youngest master of the house returned from a night away. It was early however, more so than he had returned in the past. His mother was abed, or so he imagined, and his siblings and the servants equally so. Eric was not sure what instinct had caught ahold of him to wake him so unnaturally, before the sun's warmth had even tamed the skies, but he had become aware of a powerful restlessness. A biting urge to move, to be away from the limiting constraints of roofs and buildings. The thought of waiting until a more conventional hour to make his disappearance had seemed unbearable, and so he had made his farewells, departing from the neighbouring household with a thrill of relief and freedom.

The thrill of riding had made up another of his earliest memories, the blood racing pleasure of danger and movement, and the conquest when one could master the nuances of the seat and remain in control of the horse beneath even as you flew. He was a natural, the beasts that were his father's creations responding automatically to his touch, as though they recognised in him something of the mastery of the one who was their maker. So it was that the discomfort of the horse alerted Eric as his own uncertain misgivings never could. Moving towards the creature, speaking softly, not fae commands, but whispered comforts, Eric felt his own unease mounting. There was something amiss, even in the comforting surroundings of his home he could feel it.. sense it, and perhaps some of his Father's fae sensitivity had indeed passed on to his eldest child, because Eric was aware of it. No longer carefree, as his mood had been when he had ridden out the night before, the heir to the Neocounty approached cautiously, the turreted manse that reflected so beautifully the burning light of a new day.

The door swung open easily beneath Eric's fingers. That was normal; what was less so was the silence, absolute and threatening that engulfed him as he stepped inside. There was a lifelessness to the stillness, and Eric felt himself caught in the grip of a sudden fear, powerful and irrational that there was something terrible stalking him, awaiting him through the familiar silent corridors of his home. He had to force himself to calmness, to stop himself from breaking and running. 'A Neocount does not run,' he had whispered to himself, shakily, trying by speaking them aloud to make the words the truth. And then with just a hint more of certainty ' A Tarrant does not run.'

The carpet muffled his steps as he made his cautious way forwards, instinct taking over and guiding him in the direction of his mother's rooms. He would not wake her, he told herself, he just meant to see that she was alright, and if by chance she was awake and concerned, reassure her of his safe return. The corridors seemed lifeless, the providence of a land trapped out of time. There was an Earth legend along those lines, Eric remembered. He had seen the book that had been Alix's birthday present, dog eared and much treasured, with the elaborately inked images, the most powerful the one spread across two separate pages; the beautiful woman, with flame red ringlets spread out elegantly across a canopied bed. He remembered still his sister's indignant questions on first receiving it 'Mummy is she _dead_?' Their mother's warm amusement, 'No, love, she is sleeping. Just sleeping.'

Eric paused outside the doorway to his Mother's room. He knew she was probably asleep and he did not want to disturb her... But... He knew instinctively that she wouldn't mind, and the instinct that had woken him so strangely was still very much with him. Guided by...he was not sure what, Eric gently swung the large door open. At first all he saw was darkness, the early sunlight not making it past the thick nuvelvet curtains. The bed was a dark shape towards the end of the room. The air smelt musty, undisturbed. He thought distractedly that Elsa would probably pause in her rounds to open the windows, her face set in an expression of amused indignation.

The maxim that stale air caused disease was one of her favourites.

As his eyes adjusted Eric could make out more shapes. The dresser pressed against the wall, above it the shadowed outline of the elaborately carved mirror that had been his Mother's Anniversary gift from their father. 'Not an original,' as the Neocount had told her softly, his half smile lending warmth to the usually distanced face, as he saw her undisguised delight. 'But a fairly accurate copy.' Eric had later overheard his Mother speaking to some of her friends, telling them of how the piece was a flawless rendition; unidentifiable from those lost in the Landing. It hung there now, reflecting the darkened corners of a shadowed room. Drawn by that selfsame instinct, Eric stepped closer into the centre of the room, allowing the door to shut softly behind him. He had to force himself to breathe evenly as the panic tightened painfully in his gut, on seeing that the bed lay empty.

His father's workroom was much as it had always been. The Realm of a scientist, and the Sanctuary, Eric was seldom allowed to disturb his father when he was engaged in his research, just as the servants were commanded to refrain from entering it in the course of their cleaning. Now he perceived the Earth relics glittering in their cases, but with none of the curiosity or the thrill of the forbidden that had imbued such visits before. This had been the last room he had looked in, being the place in which he felt the least comfort. He stepped through its desk spaces and work surfaces only now, that he had established what he had felt the first time he had stepped through the corridors. There was no one here. His brother and sister's rooms were in much the same state as his mother's; curtains drawn against the light, but beds unslept in. Alix's had been the strangest, his younger sister's seven years of accumulated clutter discarded on the floor as it was so often, but the bed cold and empty. He had met the eyes of a favoured teddy bear, cold and alien, and had backed in silence out of the room, the uncertain fear solidifying inside him.

Now he stood in the entrance of the second level of his father's workroom, certain both that he was trapped within the folds of some terrible dream, and that in here, amongst the cold instruments of dead science's equipment he would find his answers. There was unfriendliness to the carefully arranged shelves, he thought, it was like looking on a reflection of his Father's soul. Metholodical, brilliant, but at the same time imposing and somehow unapproachable. There were more names on the list of those his father had charmed than he could hope to remember, much less call to mind. None of that could change the fact that the Neocount was in his soul different from other men; distanced. Other. The consequence, Eric had come to understand, of the adeptitude that had set him so far apart. Eric's eyes fell on a candle, burnt all the way down to the bottom of the holder. It was cold now, he could immediately tell, what flame had once warmed it extinguished long ago. The sight and the thought left him feeling disproportionately cold.

When he saw the door he understood at once what it represented. The answer to the mystery of the change of his home from comforting haven to silent tomb. It stood before him, like a challenge. A doorway whose existence he had never before noticed. 'Anything can be hidden,' his Father's long ago words of instruction reached him softly in his mind, 'from the minds and eyes of those who do not know to look for it.' Eric understood by instinct that something of this nature had happened here; to cause the eyes of those who fell on this place to glance off it, to notice only the continuing wall, their perceptions influenced by his Father's will. He also understood that whatever Working had concealed it then had been lifted now. The secret lay before him, beckoning, challenging. _Terrible_.

_A Tarrant does not run_. His mind curiously distanced, his hand surprisingly steady, Eric reached for the door.

Darkness greeted him. Complete darkness, far more so than the shadowed lightlessness of the curtained rooms upstairs. This was a different thing, a primitive thing, and Eric recognised the difference. He also recognised that whatever Power had held sway here, it was banished now, these tendrils of Malevolence all that remained of his influence. He steeled himself, and closed his eyes, the Pattern of Working taking place in his mind. It was a simple Working, one that he had mastered several times in the past, when his mind had been in the right frame, and he accomplished it now. With a more or less imperceptible shifting the fae currents responded to his will, altering in their patterns until his need was satisfied. Light. Not the bright and reassuring warmth of fire, but illumination all the same, enough for him to see by. Aware of the risk of his courage faltering if he waited any longer, the heir to the Neocounty descended into the dark.

Belowground. The name reached his mind by some thought process he could not quite identify but Eric nonetheless knew it to be accurate. The stair which he had followed had been hewn out of the rock itself, following the natural foundations of the cave like formations. The architect had hewn the rock itself to suit his need and allow his passage, and although the construction had a very different feel to that of the exquisite revivalist towers of the Castle above him, he knew with a sinking certainty that they had been formed by the same hand. Had his Father created this passageway back then at the Castle's conception; a premonition of the darkness later to overtake him, even as he had carved out the floating beauty of the Seat that had seemed the mirror of his successes?

Or had it come later, an addition to the whole, created only after his quarrel with the king, his excommunication? Eric had been only nine then, old enough to understand that there was something wrong, that his father had become more withdrawn, more obsessed with the studies that had always been his fascination, but the understanding had only come later. With the disconnected parts of conversations overheard from the servants, and once from his Mother. They cursed the king, although they did so quietly, for what he had done to their master. And after the Incident.... Eric felt his dread increase at the memory of his Father, white faced, ashen, his brush with death having rendered his features sharp with exhaustion, as he was carried to his room. The defect was genetic, Eric knew, inherited from the Neocount's father, although as of yet his brother's had shown no signs of it. The failure one of the heart valves, growing gradually more dangerous, until it had loomed up in the spectre of death to threaten his Father's life at only twenty nine. Eric did not know if the same death waited inside his own body, as of yet unidentified and dormant.

The doorway before him was simple. After only a moment's pause, Eric stepped through it, the quiet whisper of running water sounding in his ears. He knew as he entered that this was it, the site of the wrongness, and he froze at the sight of the block, of simple stone that dominated the cave-like chamber around it. It was the single piece of furniture, and it drew his eyes with a dreadful fascination, although it was a moment before his eyes adjusted to the gloom enough to make out the figure lying sprawled upon it.

Stepping forwards, captured by the dreamlike nightmare of reality, Eric saw, in vivid detail the fall of a skirt, brown fabric, stained violently with red... His eyes rising to the still figure of a woman, beautiful, still. Her blood a dried stain pooling blackly against the stone and clotted thickly against the paleness of her exposed breasts. Hair falling down, rich and red, mingling and sticky with the tanglement of her blood. The figures of two more smaller figures, seen peripherally on the floor, their child limbs enter tangled, but his eyes were on his mother. His mother, bound tightly to the stone before him, the violence of her death horrifyingly apparent, a sacrifice to feed the hunger of the darkness, the malevolence he had sensed so strongly before. _The Princess lies, spread out beautifully upon the bed, her dark hair spread elegantly across her pale shoulders, like the streams of drying blood..._

Screaming Eric woke.


End file.
